IMPACT (Book 1): A Post-Apocalyptic Tale (8 page)

* * *

“Sure you don’t want me to come along, Dad?”

Mathew, Edward, and Paul were halfway up the steps to the church. They’d arranged for the boy to stay with Father Claudio while they were away.

“No son, it’s fine. We’re only going to collect a few vegetables in a town nearby. Boring, really.” The lie nagged at Edward’s conscience a bit, but they’d agreed not to tell Mathew the truth. The boy would have insisted on joining and he didn’t want that.

Mathew nodded, not quite convinced. He studied his father’s expression for an instant before seemingly deciding all was okay.

They stopped at the church’s entrance. Edward had intended to say goodbye as casually as possible; as he normally would. Now that the time had come though, he was hesitating. Although their plan was quite straightforward, there was a chance – slim as it may be – that he might not return. Images of the swarm of afflicted inside the warehouse with their vulgar, barbaric violence broke into his imagination before he could whisk them away.

“We’ll be back in the evening,” he said, doing his best to ignore the sudden void he felt inside his chest. He noticed Paul’s sympathetic eyes upon him. He felt this mild-mannered priest knew exactly what he was going through. Despite that, he couldn’t help wishing he were alone with his son.

“‘Kay, Dad,” Mathew leaned forwards and gave his father a quick hug. “See you later.”

Paul leaned his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Come, I’ll introduce you to Father Claudio.”

Just as they stepped inside the church, Edward called out, “Be good, boy.”

“I will, Dad,” said Mathew with a smile.

Edward turned. As he walked away, fighting the urge to look back, he breathed in deeply, then exhaled as slowly and steadily as he could.

“He’s a little odd, at times, Father Claudio,” whispered Paul as he and Mathew crossed the church’s humble nave. “But I think you’ll get along.”

Paul knocked on Claudio’s door. “Enter,” replied the man’s deep voice.

He was sitting at his desk, a copy of Spinoza’s
Ethics
open in front of him.
Not a good sign
, thought Paul. It was the kind of book he read when in one of his moods. Nonetheless, Claudio raised his eyes to the teenager and managed a smile.

“Welcome, my son,” he said.

“Th-thank you, Father,” came Mathew’s shy response.

“I understand you’ll help me out here for a while, while Mr. Moore is away.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Sounds like a barrel of laughs, doesn’t it?” asked Claudio, with an ironic twinkle in his eye.

Mathew couldn’t help but laugh. “It’s great, Father, really.”

Paul observed the young man in his Metallica t-shirt and white trainers, and thought he was different enough to perhaps intrigue Claudio. Despite all the older priest’s professed aversion to human contact of late, the boy might help him get his mind off things a bit and mitigate his ill temper.

“Okay then,” said Paul, “I’ll be going.”

Claudio waved a distracted hand towards him. “Goodbye, Father Paul,” said Mathew, politely.

As he left the room, Paul shot a meaningful glance towards Claudio.
Don’t be tough on him
, that glance said,
he’s been through a lot
. The older man chuckled under his breath.

He left them, closing the door. Before leaving, he bowed his head against the door and listened.

“Is that a guitar, Father?” he heard Mathew ask, probably pointing towards the corner of the study where the old instrument lay, covered in dust.

“Indeed it is. It belonged to one of the local priests, I believe. Do you play?”

“Just a bit,” replied Mathew. Paul could hear the eagerness in his voice.

“Ah. That’s wonderful. Classical? I’d love to hear some Fernando Sor.”

“Ehm. Well. I’m more into heavy metal, Father,” replied Mathew, meekly.

Claudio let out a long, deep sigh.

Paul smiled and quietly left the church.

It took a few seconds for Adrian to spot them.

He’d followed Ally’s pointing finger, but all he saw were thick, pale banks of fog. He tried to pierce them, narrowing his eyelids and scanning the hazy view, but could see nothing. It was like sailing through hordes of ghostly apparitions, each floating aimlessly above the water and eerily blending in with the others.

Then there they were, emerging gradually, pushing their way through the mist like towering giants from a fairy tale: the White Cliffs of Dover.

He had seen them before, of course, when visiting his aunt, but only during the summer. Back then, they had seemed pretty and almost difficult to look at with the sunlight reflecting off their chalky surface. But now, in this constant cloud that had washed away the seasons, the cliffs looked surreal and almost alive.

As he gazed at them, with his lips slightly parted, he remembered a history lesson from school. Their teacher had told them that when the Romans had first travelled to the British Isles, it had possibly been their first foray into waters other than those of the Mediterranean. These alien waters belonged not to that
mare nostrum
, the sea the Romans ruled and called their own, but were from the realm of an ancient, hostile divinity – the Titan Oceanus, one that pre-dated both their gods and the Greeks gods; a primordial force of nature they didn’t trust.

He pictured them as they might have been. Fearfully huddled in their ships, far from the glorious sun of Rome, sailing through the mists of these malevolent seas, governed by an unknown deity. A shiver of both fear and excitement travelled down his spine.

There were the cliffs. Beyond them lay England.

They were getting closer to Aunt Hellen’s house. Perhaps, soon, they would be safe.

* * *

They had veered north, dropping anchor next to an old weathered pier.

As the man fastened ropes to the moorage, the children went through their belongings to make sure they had everything.

Once again, the weather had turned foul and a thin, prickly rain beat down on them.

“Where are you headed?” asked the man.

Adrian considered whether it was wise to tell him, but before he could stop her Alice replied. “Bately,” she said. “Ady’s aunt lives there.”

The man drew a quick breath through his nose and nodded, looking towards the cliffs.

“I heard it’s quite safe there. You should be all right.”

They just stood there, three figures in the mist.

“We’re almost home, Ady,” said Alice, with a big smile. She was happy, which was good to see, yet Adrian couldn’t shake his uneasiness at the man’s presence. Alice turned, unexpectedly, towards the man and gave him a big hug.

“Thank you, sir,” she said, her cheeks sinking into his raincoat.

Adrian felt all his muscles tense up. He brought a hand to his coat, ready to draw the knife. But he lowered it, when he noticed the man’s expression.

He was standing still, as if frozen. His arms widened, palms facing each other. He stared, speechless, down towards Alice. Adrian saw him fold both his lips inside his mouth, and squeeze them between his rotten teeth. He then closed his eyes and cried a single, trembling tear before rapidly wiping it away when Alice withdrew from her embrace.

He’s a worm
, though Adrian,
a harmless worm
.

Alice stood next to him and, with a warm motion of her eyebrows, she gestured to him to leave. Adrian nodded.

They turned their backs to the man and began to make their way up and away from the beach. Adrian was almost sure they needed to head north, then east a little. It shouldn’t be too hard to find Bately.

As they climbed a grassy slope that rose between the white rocks, they heard the man behind them call out. “Stick close to that young lad!” he cried. “He’s a good boy!”

Alice smiled and took his hand.

They had wind in their hair.

It was odd for this minute detail to impose itself so clearly, but Paul couldn’t remember when he’d last been inside a moving vehicle.

He couldn’t help but smile as he watched his companions’ hair dance crazily, powered by the powerful gusts of air pouring into the vehicle.

“Fun, isn’t it?” asked Catherine, one hand on her temple in an attempt to tame an unruly lock of hair. Paul smiled. It was.

They were travelling south, towards the Southern Outpost, the five of them quite comfortable inside the army Range Rover. It was going to be a short ride, but they were enjoying the speed. Once inside the LMM-ready Wolf speeds would decrease significantly.

They were escorted by Lance Corporal Billings, who had helped with their awkward firearms training, and Lieutenant Robert Neeson, a serious-looking 23-year-old man who had, Bill told them, been wounded in action. A long jagged scar, running from his forehead and disappearing beneath his shirt collar, was a life-long reminder of that unfortunate experience.

“Have things been difficult with the ‘wraiths in Bately?” asked Moore, turning his head towards Catherine, who sat at the opposite end of the passenger seat. Paul occupied the seat between them.

“It has, yes,” she replied. “Ahm… I prefer the term ‘afflicted’, although there is no correct medical term, as it were.”

“Oh, yes,” said Moore, apologetically, “I suppose it’s not as harsh.”

“Yes, I agree.
Nero’s Affliction
. I wonder who came up with the name,” said Catherine, pensively.

“Must have been someone on Sean’s bulletin boards, online,” said Paul. “They seem to have a predilection for these names. You know, like something out of a fantasy novel or a video game–”

“Or the Bible,” interjected Catherine and immediately blushed, her milky-white Gaelic skin turning red. She quickly turned to look outside the window.

“Europa carried the plague too though, didn’t it?” asked Moore, apparently oblivious to Cathy’s f
aux pas
. “I doubt the infection could have spread so rapidly to the West otherwise.”

“I believe they all did,” said Paul. “Although I’ve heard the effects of being exposed to Nero’s area of impact are far worse than what we’ve seen here.”

They were quiet for an instant, each silently considering the atrocity of an even more ruthless form of the affliction.

“Here we are, people,” said Billings from the driver’s seat, jolting his passengers from haunting images of tortured souls.

* * *

The Southern Outpost was little more than a shed.

As they stepped out of the vehicle, Paul thought it looked vulnerable and defenceless against the formidable view of the stormy Channel waters before it.

The two men stationed there, Privates Jack Wallace and Tim Greene, snapped to attention as their superiors approached the cabin.

“Bill’s really got these boys trained properly, hasn’t he?” said Catherine under her breath as she nodded towards the men.

“At ease,” said Neeson, waving down their salutes. “All good, here?”

“Yessir,” said Tim. “We had a pretty bad storm, earlier, but things are quieter now. Doubt we’ll see any refugees with this weather, Sir.”

Neeson nodded, eyes on the waves below.

“Tim, Jack, we’re going to take the Wolf. We’re headed to Ashford to try and pick up some meds. Mr. Moore here believes he can lead us to them,” explained Billings. As the four Guard members discussed the details of their expedition, Paul walked over to Edward who was standing close to the cliff’s edge, hands in his pockets, admiring the view. He reminded Paul of Caspar David Friedrich’s
Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog
, his silhouette dark against the elements.

“There’s still beauty in the world, isn’t there, Father?” he asked Paul without turning towards him.

“I believe so.”

“Except, it’s a frightening kind of beauty, isn’t it? One that has forgotten mankind. Left it behind.”

They breathed in the heavy sea air, pregnant with water.

“I’m of the belief that there is no such thing as beauty without mankind, or its gods.”

“Gods?” asked Moore, surprised by the plural, an eyebrow slightly raised.

“Well,” said Paul with a smile, “one must at least be courteous enough to acknowledge the other attempts at describing the Almighty, wrong as they may be.”

Moore smiled too.

They gazed at the sea and the sky, each lashing out at the other as if in some sort of primordial elemental war. A chaotic passageway to the even greater chaos Europe had fallen in.

They were about to turn and rejoin the others when they heard Catherine’s voice a couple of feet behind them.

“Who’s that?”

The two men peered down at the beach.

And indeed there was someone.

The three of them observed a single, solitary figure slowly making its way along the wet sand towards them.

They were lost.

The mist had crept in from the sea, wrapping its spectral mantle around the countryside. The two children had stumbled through it, hand in hand, sometimes not able even to see past an arm’s length in front of them. They’d looked out for sign posts and tried to find their way on the tattered map Alice carried in her rucksack, but it was impossible to pinpoint exactly where they were.

“
Dammit
,” said Adrian. “Sorry ‘bout this, Ally.” He felt like he’d failed her. It wasn’t a good feeling.

“It’s okay,” she said, squeezing his hand in hers, affectionately. “I’m sure we’re close, anyway.”

“Yes, we can’t be far,” he replied. But the truth was, he had no idea how far they might be. Perhaps they’d been heading in the wrong direction for hours. If that were the case, he wondered how long it might take them to get back on track if they ever did find the way. The last thing he wanted was to have to spend another night in the open. What if they were heading straight for a gang of meteorwraiths? What if they came across a maniac, someone like the guy on the boat, but one that would actually harm Alice? What if–

“There’s a cottage,” said Alice.

Adrian had been peering down at his worn shoes, hypnotized by their rhythmic coming and going.

He looked up. And there it was, an isolated house with an oil lamp hanging above the front door, its light weak but steady.